Arriver
Like many words in the French language, arriver is a nautical term whose meaning broadened.
It comes from the popular Latin ad (to) and ripa (shore), and the verb initially meant to accost, to approach. It was also used in sailing to mean “maneuver into the wind.”
Over time, the meaning of arriver gradually expanded to lexical fields other than seafaring. As early as the 16th century, arriver simply meant to reach one’s destination, to arrive at a given place, a port or a city.
The word has since continued to evolve and is now widely used in an abstract sense. It can mean that an event or situation can just as well happen, and can also be used in an impersonal sense to say “it can happen” or “I can get distracted.”